Shutting up for the good of us all

The force, hit in recent years by the loss of personnel and resources thanks to cuts in funding, says it will have difficulty policing new places in addition to its workload policing the existing ones.

Therefore it wants the council, via its relevant committees, to put the brakes on.

Well, that seems a perfectly fine stance to me, and not in any way morally or ethically problematic.

In fact, I’d go further than merely preventing pubs from opening just in case they bring problems that can’t be policed. What I’d do is bring in a whole raft of new rules aimed at stopping not only offending but the possibility of offending.

Let’s start by preventing anybody under the age of 40 from leaving their homes between the hours of 6pm and 6am. It’s a proven fact that most burglars and muggers are aged under 40 and that most of their offending takes place during the hours of darkness, so it makes perfect sense to keep all potential troublemakers off the streets during the hours in question.

Admittedly the overwhelming majority of people under 40 would no more contemplate committing a burglary or mugging than attempt to fly to the Moon in a cardboard box, but we should all be prepared to give up some of our rights and freedoms for the greater good.

It is also clear that we need to impose an immediate ban on people owning any kind of jewellery, any wristwatch more advanced than a three quid dodgy digital with a plastic strap, any form of smartphone, any games console more advanced than a Sega Megadrive and any television set, car or other major consumer item less than a decade old.

If we did that, we could return to the domestic idyll of the past, when every ordinary person in the land was able to leave all doors and windows open at all times, because once again nobody would have a single thing worth nicking.

We also need to crack down on the terrorising of public facilities such as community centres and libraries by gangs of feral, anti-social people. This would be best accomplished by closing down any public facility where such behaviour is a problem.

While we’re at it, we should crack down on shoplifting by closing any shop that falls victim to a shoplifter, and prevent any new shops being opened on the same street just in case they have a problem with shoplifting in the future.

After all, you can’t be too careful when public safety is at stake, even if it means penalising people who haven’t done anything wrong, restricting their activities and preventing them from earning a living.

I can see no alternative to the measures I’ve outlined above.

Except one – and it actually makes far more sense.

Our senior police officers, our council and our MPs could join forces and demand more money from Whitehall.

They could point out to the relevant officials that our police force is so grievously, disgracefully under-funded that there aren’t even enough officers to absorb the opening of a new pub, and that the existing frontline officers, hard-working and courageous though they undoubtedly are, risk becoming overwhelmed.

Of course, making a statement such as that, even though it’s 100 per cent true, might have career implications for certain ambitious people, but I’m sure such concerns are far outweighed by their loyalty to this community and our hard-pressed ground level police officers.

<li>l HAVE you seen that new anti-smoking campaign in which a roll-up lover’s tobacco pouch turns out to be filled with polluted flesh?

With a growing number of smokers believing roll-ups are somehow healthier, the ads are a graphic way of reminding them that home-brewed fags conceal as many nasty surprises as the conventional variety.

I wonder whether the same sort of shock approach should be made for other pressing issues, such as the election heading our way in late spring.

Maybe we should have an ad showing a person opening an envelope with ‘manifesto’ written on it, only to have a great big forked tongue pop out and try to throttle them.

Or two hands shaking, only for one of the hands to end up with fewer fingers than it had when the handshake began.

Or a person opening their front door and being overwhelmed by an enormous cascade of oil.

Or maybe I’m being too cynical. Yes, that’ll be it. I’m looking forward to seeing the candidates on my doorstep again. I only hope they can find it after all these years.

<li>MATT Bailey and Luke Wareham have launched a midweek vinyl evening at their excellent Baila coffee house in Victoria Road.

“We want people to bring in their own LPs and let us have a listen,” said Matt.

If anybody from Baila happens to be reading this, I like your style and would be happy to share some of my collection with your customers.

My favourite is still Threshing and Cultivating by Steam Power, which opens with a 1950s farm worker having a prolonged coughing fit and mostly consists of two traction engines dragging a plough from one side of a field to another.

I’m also fond of London’s Last Trams, a poignant recording of some trams made in 1952, of Let’s Have Another Party by Mrs Mills, of The Marty Riff Association Plays the Hits of Creedence Clearwater Revival and of my double album of the funeral of Sir Winston Churchill.

So I’ll expect the invitation in the post, then.

<li>lI WAS so deeply inspired by Alcohol Concern’s Dry January campaign that I decided to take the pledge and not touch a drop.

It’s only been a few days but things are going well. I feel better, I think I look better, my partner thinks I look better, my friends think I look better and Rodney thinks I look better.

It’s very kind of Rodney to say I look better, as we’re only recent acquaintances. He showed up in my living room shortly after I took the pledge and he’s ever so nice.

He also speaks very good English for a six-foot tangerine-coloured rhinoceros.

I’m not so sure about the giant centipedes I keep finding in the airing cupboard, though.